Guggenheim Partners is poised to ramp up its multistrategy hedge fund business with the addition of as many as 10 new portfolio managers this year.

Guggenheim Global Trading currently has 15 managers in-house, managing more than $500 million in Guggenheim Partners' assets, as well as some outside capital. But Guggenheim has pledged as much as another $1.5 billion to GGT, which debuted a year ago, and GGT is interviewing several possible candidates as it aims to increase its stable of managers to as many as 25 by the end of 2013, Bloomberg News reports.

While GGT features long/short equity, event-driven, merger arbitrage and quantitative strategies, it's currently looking for just the former, seeking out sector-specific managers. Among the strategies it hopes to add are energy, healthcare and utilities, Guggenheim Partners' Loren Katzovitz and Patrick Hughes said.

Katzovitz said he and Hughes are looking for managers who can earn "high single-digit returns" with net exposure of between 15% and 20%. New members of GGT's portfolio management team must also be willing to submit to investment guidelines agreed with the two Guugenheim partners.

In return, the managers will get about 15% of the performance fees they earn and the ability to take a stake in GGT after two years; the more profitable a manager, the more equity he or she can take. And GGT will insulate them from the non-investment aspects of running a hedge fund.

"A lot of these guys are attracted because they don't want to have to set up their own infrastructure and raise all the capital," Katzovitz told Bloomberg.

As part of the expansion, GGT, which is based in Purchase, N.Y., may open an office in London. Katzovitz said it is also looking at opportunities in Japan.

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